Unlimited Power
by ardavenport
Summary: Vader reaches for ultimate power. And falls short.


**Unlimited Power**

by ardavenport

* * *

"Unlimited Power!!!"

Blue-white lightning shot out into the drizzly night sky from Darth Sidious's outstretched hands. Flashing, twisting, curling, writhing with the power of the Dark Side of the Force. It flashed and licked the night sky over the terrace. It throbbed with not just the ultimate power of the Force, but hate itself and a lust for power that filled every cell with vital energy. The energy of life.

Sidious released the power and exhaled, satisfied and renewed. Next to him, his Apprentice, Darth Vader, watched, the receding flickers of blue-white Sith fire reflecting on his black, expressionless eyepieces and on the black, angular plastoid curves of his breath mask and helmet.

Vader exhaled.

Vader inhaled.

Vader exhaled.

There was no solitude with Vader's machine-driven breathing around, always filling any empty spaces of silence. Sidious smiled under the hood of his black robe. Perhaps they would be able to change that. He turned to his apprentice and fellow Sith.

"Now, Lord Vader."

Vader slowly lifted his black-suited right arm, nearly identical to the left. Except that it was now flesh and bone.

Half a season had been spent cloning the arm as a replacement for the one that had been lost first, years ago in Vader's foolish fight with Darth Tyranus, back with Vader had still been the Jedi Apprentice, Anakin Skywalker, before he had found the proper training for his talents. And many more days had been spent micro-attaching it, healing the connections and exercising it to proper strength.

There remained only one more test. Before they could do more to replace the missing and damaged parts of his body.

The Force, Dark or Light Side, flowed only through the cells of a living being. But Vader's limbs had been lost. First one arm to Tyranus, a hard lesson, but an acceptable one. But his remaining limbs had been taken, his body scarred and ravaged, in his confrontation with Obi-Wan Kenobi, an inferior wielder of only the Light Side of the Force. But an unexpectedly devious fighter.

The loss was cruel and bitter. Sidious had scraped up the charred remains of his Apprentice from the shore of he volcanic flow where Kenobi had foolishly left him for dead, and taken him to the best medical facility in the Empire where his predecessor, General Grievous, had been revived, rebuilt. There had been far less of Grievous to work with, so Vader's life support suit had been an easily achievable though intricate task. But Grievous had been an ordinary being. Prosthetics and machines were not suitable replacements for a true Sith like Darth Vader. They only added mobility and prolonged life at best.

Without his arms and legs, with his damaged internal organs supported by an environment suit, Vader was only half the magnificent Sith he had once been. He was barely fit to wield the power that was destined for him. He still grasped the Force. It swelled with his lust for it's boundless power. But he was limited, his powers caged by the machines that kept him alive, by the artificial arms and legs that moved his ruined body about.

They had sought to change that.

Sidious closed his eyes, feeling the power coming. Even damaged as he was, Vader had learned focus, to use his hate and anger, magnifying it, taking the spark from his fear and feeding it from his desires. He had not felt such power from his Apprentice since Vader had kneeled before him in the Jedi Temple, the bodies of all the Jedi scattered around them. The sensation of the growing cracking energy rose in Darth Sidious in an orgasmic rush. He did not need to open his eyes to see the Sith lightning emerging from the fingertips of Vader's black glove. The power was there, the first bridge to it now rebuilt in Vader's newly cloned arm. Vader raised it to the sky- - -

Energy slammed into Sidious's unprotected body and he hit the wall behind the terrace. But he hardly felt the impact. His body spasmed and writhed, the Sith lightning from Vader rapidly stabbed deep into him, the killing energy flashing, burning and roaming through every part of his body, trying to tear him apart.

[i]Unlimited Power!!![/i]

It stopped.

Suddenly released, Sidious crashed to the ground.

He grunted, feeling the impact from ordinary, pedestrian gravity pulling him down to the hard duracrete terrace.

[i]Why did it stop?[/i]

He heard gasping, wheezing and clicking sounds nearby. Trembling, Sidious lifted himself up. He inhaled, drawing in his rage, renewing himself with it.

Attacked. He had been attacked.

Treachery.

In the dim light reflected from the low clouds from the tops of the towers below them, Sidious saw Vader's body, total black on dark duracrete. Even in the gloom, Sidious could see Vader's right arm, shriveled and twisted. Not only had it been consumed by the Sith energy that its cloned cells could not contain, it had detached from the stump of Vader's original arm, rejected. The flexible suit armor of the arm was soft, misshapen and half empty.

Fumbling in his robe, Sidious retrieved his comlink.

"We need medical assistance in my private apartment. Immediately." He clicked it off and tossed it aside without waiting for a confirmation. They would come.

Sidious crawled on his hands and knees to his fallen Apprentice. Crouching over him, the Sith Master held his own scarred hands over the black-suited body. Not only had the Sith energy destroyed the cloned arm, the lightning had rebounded and damaged Vader's lift support apparatus. But even wounded as he was, Vader's spirit still vibrated with the power denied him. His frustration sharpened into a spear of hatred that would have killed. If it could.

Sidious's hands slid underneath the bottom edge of the black helmet. Finding the catch, he lifted it off, revealing the hairless mass of scars of Vader's unprotected skull, pale and sickly in the darkness. Sidious gently lifted it up onto his knees. He touched as little as possible, but strength and power flowed from his hands into the wounded body before him.

Vader jerked, trying to get away, but he was helpless, blank eyepieces staring upward, head cradled on his Master's knees. He gasped for air from his damaged breathing unit, spent and separated from the power he had grasped so briefly. He did not understand. But his Master did.

To be truly devoted to the Dark Side, a Sith placed power over everything. Over any allegiances, over obedience to a Master, over everything. A Sith was totally selfless to power alone. In the end, nothing else mattered. Sidious had expected no less from any of his Apprentices, but he had always been disappointed. Ventress had been just a pretender, not even worthy of a Sith name. Maul had been powerful and ambitious, but base and easily tricked. Tyranus had been powerful but limited and inflexibly tied to his old Jedi traditions and incapable of realizing his duty to overthrow the Master.

Vader was a truly worthy Apprentice.

Sidious heard the guards and the medical team enter the outer rooms but he did not move, remaining bent low over Vader, his hands lightly stroking the air over the scarred, discolored scalp.

There would be no more attempts with cloned limbs or body organs. The experiment was a failure.

A pity.

Vader stopped struggling, realizing that he was not about to die after all. But he was confused, which was understandable. Sidious smiled. He was still young.

They would stay as they were for now. Master and Apprentice.

**- - - = = = END = = = - - -**

(This story was first posted on tf.n: 3-March-2008)

**Disclaimer:** All characters and situations belong to George and Lucasfilm; I'm just playing in their sandbox.


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